"A Conversation with Jonathan Schell"

By Tai Moses, AlterNet

In 1982, Jonathan Schell wrote "The Fate of the Earth," a bestseller about the grim realities of nuclear proliferation that galvanized millions of readers and became a cornerstone of the movement to abolish nuclear weapons. He has published nearly a dozen books in the years before and after "The Fate of the Earth," but with his newest book, "The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence and the Will of the People," Schell may again have the chance to spark another national conversation; this time, about the growing dangers of military power and the need for nonviolent solutions to geopolitical conflicts.

To write a book about nonviolence at a time when the U.S. government is increasingly at war with the world takes a rare sort of intellectual bravery. But Schell, who spent more than a decade researching and writing the book, pulls no punches. "In a steadily and irreversibly widening sphere, violence, always a mark of human failure and a bringer of sorrow, has now also become dysfunctional as a political instrument," he writes. As it happens, I met Schell recently in Barcelona where, with seven other progressive American journalists, we were panelists at a conference in honor of World Press Freedom Day. We were a diverse, lively group, our political views ranging from the moderate Tina Rosenberg of the New York Times to the radical Robert Jensen from the University of Austin.

"The Unconquerable World" came out the day after Schell arrived in Barcelona and was promptly reviewed, and as he said, "savaged" in the New York Times. Schell took this disappointment with equanimity; I got the sense that his is a deeply attentive nature no matter what his surroundings or situation. There amid the fantastic whimsy of Gaudi's Barcelona, the Catalans – who had declared their passionate opposition to the war on Iraq at a 1.3 million-person peace march in February down the broad tree-lined Rambla Catalyuna – put us all at ease. He gave me a copy of the book and I began reading it on the long flight back to the States. It's a searching, eloquent inquiry into war and the nonviolent movements that have grown up alongside war, as well their champions, from Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. to Woodrow Wilson and Hannah Arendt.

Recently, Schell came through San Francisco and we met to talk about his book and how it was being received. "What's been very happy for me," he said, "is that as I've gone around the country, in the community of opposition I've had very warm and encouraging responses and this is hugely meaningful to me. I feel that if this can happen then I'm reaching the people I want to reach."

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